How Alex Alleyne Sells: The "Machine" That Bet on Himself and Won

Imagine growing up poor, sharing a bed in the office of your aunt’s place. But you have bigger dreams, so you dedicate yourself to your schoolwork throughout your childhood.?

Thanks to that dedication, you are rewarded with a full scholarship to study law at a good university. Definitive proof to yourself and everyone around you that you will overcome the many disadvantages you faced.

Amazing, right? Except, after spending just 8 months at your university, you drop out to take the most junior sales position possible.?

Well, that’s exactly what?Alex Alleyne?did.?

“I always believed that I was destined for something great,” Alex said. “I've always seen myself as someone on big stages, someone that could do big deals, earn well, and create a great life for myself.”

The rest of his family didn’t quite share his vision.

“They were devastated, really gutted,” Alex said, referencing when he told his family that he dropped out for an entry-level job. “Thought I'd lost my mind. Thought that I had fumbled it. My whole family did, and I think most people just thought I would end up becoming a statistic from the area that I grew up in.”

Except Alex has become anything but. Thanks to discipline, smarts, and the high standards he puts on himself, in 10 years he’s moved up from a Business Development Representative to a Strategic Sales Lead to Sales Manager to Sales Director to now Area Vice President at?Braze. And he’s also the host of the?Elite Level Sales Leaders Podcast, where he interviews the top 1% of sellers to understand their process (that sounds familiar…).

Bottom line, Alex risked it all on sales and it paid off tenfold. What are the keys to his success??

We sat down with him to find out.

1. What motivates you at work, even when you aren't feeling it?

I'm someone who talks a lot about this paradigm between motivation and discipline. And the reality is that some days I feel extremely motivated and other days I don't. That is just the nature of being a human – we have highs and lows.?

What I am though is the most disciplined person in the room. So I actually don't care and don't pay much attention to my motivation. But I pay extreme attention to my discipline. And I get it done no matter how I feel every day.?

I have a set routine. I have a set system that goes as far as, in my apartment, there are no dishes left in my sink at the end of the day. Those types of principles go into my work life and my personal life.?

People see me as a bit of a machine. I think that's fair to say, but I love it. So motivation, I don't pay that much attention to it.

2. What's your sales philosophy, in 3 sentences or less?

My sales philosophy is to set yourself up to be the best possible person you can be in terms of performance excellence, operational excellence, and character excellence. It’s really to be a bar raiser, in terms of how you perform, how you think, how you operate, how you execute – and who you are as a person.

3. What's your favorite discovery question?

It’s “Help me understand what's the impact of X?” or “What’s the impact of what you’ve just described?”.

That’s what I describe as a layer three question. So, you've got an initiative, the first layer. You often then extract some form of pain or potential value-add as a second layer, and then you've got the implication of transforming that situation as a third layer.?

What most sellers miss is that implication. Without that, you are never really in a position where you can compel action.?

4. Do you have a preferred closing technique?

When it comes to closing, there are two important aspects to consider. One is the concept of perceived value. How much perceived value does the customer have about our solution, based on how well we've driven the sales process??

The second is your leverage. How much perceived value they have about the solution dictates how much leverage you have in the deal. So, before I go into a close, I want to get a good gauge on how much perceived value we’ve built.

When the perceived value is high enough, you don't have to fight for a close. Whereas you have to fight really hard for a close when the perceived value is low.?

As far as raising perceived value, to me, perceived value is attributed ultimately to two things. One is the depth of pain felt. So, what are we solving for? And the other is how much you can instill the concept of transformative value in a customer. If you can do either of those things or ideally both of those things to a notable degree — that is what dictates perceived value.?

So, you've got to find big problems or big opportunities that impact a number of people in an organization, in an area where you can provide tremendous value.?

5. Is there a habit you have outside of work that helps you sell better?

It’s my systems.?

My personal operating system consists of meditation every day, twice a day, morning and night. It consists of journaling every night. It consists of reading every night, and it consists of some form of exercise or activity in the morning – even if it’s just a walk or a stretch. Those are my non-negotiables.

6. What’s your favorite feature in Sales Navigator?

It’s being able to build lead lists and categorize those lead lists.?

I know it sounds straightforward, but it's important, the right categorization. It's a huge part of territory planning.?

The lead builder is very advanced in the way that you can segment and categorize. If we’re thoughtful with it, we can help the team break out who the A targets are versus the B targets versus the C targets, which is at the crux of any successful prospecting effort.

7. What has been your biggest failure in sales, and how did that experience transform you?

I mean, look, I've lost several multi-million-dollar deals. At the time of losing those deals, I felt pain, I was upset, I was frustrated.?

But what I came to realize over time was the lessons learned from those losses made me the person I am today. All of those things have built incredible resiliency, and they made me extremely adaptable. I've learned a ton of lessons through each of those losses; probably more than the wins.

I can remember losing a seven-figure deal that was the make-or-break deal for the company. I think the biggest learning from that deal was not identifying and building effective champions within the account. So, when I was away, there wasn't someone who had influence or access to power and was taking action to push the deal forward. As we were getting to crunch time, I realized I didn't have that person in the room driving the agenda. Ultimately, that killed momentum, we weren't able to get the access to power that we needed, and the deal fell apart.

So, yeah, there have been painful failures. But I now look back and I’m grateful for them, because without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today.?

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